Taking care of Sadie

S left for a business trip today and, unwisely I might add, left the care of s to me. I jest. Of course I hadn't ever given the child a bath, but I've taken three hundred or more in my lifetime. I figured it couldn't be that hard. You heat it way up in there, grab a nice book, and sink down into the bubbles. I'm sure lil s can figure that out w/o too much trouble. I also don't usually put her to bed, which generally involves breast feeding. However, I was raised during the Depression, and we learned how to do without, so I'm fairly certain that the child won't...wait, is that her making noise? is she hungry already? God help me....as I was saying, no problem. Sleep well child.

As soon as we said goodbye to S at the airport and the door shut, lil s went into a full-throated crying fit. Not that I minded. I'm a dad. I just turned up the CD I was listening to.



Consider yourself soothed.

She continued to cry a wee bit just to keep me on my toes. Upon reaching home I let her play with my car keys, an activity strictly forbidden by S, but what's the point of having your spous gone if you don't do all sorts of stuff she would never allow. Relatedly, the house is currently in a minor state of chaos, but I'm just celebrating it. It's hard to remember the last time I could look at a bag or slipper on the floor without feeling compelled to put it in its proper place. It's proper place is the middle of the floor.

Well lil s took a championship nap while I attended to the important stuff in life. By that I mean a random video game I've started playing. After she woke up it was more quality key time before dinner. She also briefly did some kind of crazy head banging dance to Dave Matthews Crash into Me,



Which, yeah okay, it wouldn't be my first choice to dance crazily too, but I can't blame the little girl sometimes you just gotta shake it. Note that I said nothing about the wiggles. No wiggles in this house.

Probably the best part of our evening meal was when lil s decided/learned that she can take her bib off if she wants. I kept putting it on her only to find it handed back to me a moment later, "like, here dad, I can see you've misplaced this here item over my white shirt. I'm fine just stuffing this applesauce in my mouth and then wiping it on my shirt without this item."

I'm going to tell you what I fed her for dinner on the grounds that S loves to hear what she ate, and I figure she'll read this at some point. First we started out with some bush meat, baboon I think. You can't always be sure. Then I fed her some grass. I'm eager for her to redevelop the ability to eat grass, because I think it could solve the whole global food shortage thing. I followed this up with some delicious home made applesauce, that I noticed S tried to hid by freezing in cubes to give to the little one. Too bad, one scoop for daddy one sad look for baby.

Anyhow, after dinner we headed upstairs for our first ever bath time. I prepped the bubbles, turned down the page on a book of essays by Montaigne, and helped her get ready. Unfortunately, she decided that it was more fun to crawl around in the tub splashing and consequently, ruined my leather bound volume of essays. I thought about spanking her, but then I realized that I'm a liberal who doesn't believe in violence except in cases of road rage. So she splashed around for a while until I realized I'd forgotten to get a towel, so I took a large wad of tissues and bundled her up in those. This didn't actually happen, sorry to say. However, in the middle of bundling her up it occurred to me that the rain had increased and that our basement might be taking on water. Ergo; I bundled up the naked baby and took her downstairs to check. At that point a loud crack of thunder hit and our power went out.

So I'm standing downstairs with this naked child hoping our basement isn't going to flood, and I start telling her that it's going to be all right, because I know she's the type to panic. Luckily, our power returned after a few tense moments, and I carried her back upstairs to read books. I started with Moby Dick, because I don't want her to fall behind all those Baby Einstein kids. We don't allow toys or television in our house because we fear it stunts her mental growth. We feed her keys instead. The little munchkin finally agreed to hear a story or two including goodnight gorilla. She kept pointing to the lion in every picture in which it appeared because deep down she is a bad ass. I let her know that it growled, and she seemed real impressed.

Finally I put her down for the night, and she is currently yelling at her ceiling, and I'm wondering how much it costs to get a wet nurse on call. However, I don't want to stem the tide of operatic singing going on upstairs in case it turns out to be her true love. All in all, not a bad first night.